Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
Apr 4 – May 24, 2025

"A Smile Split by the Stars is a collaborative narration of nourbeSe philip’s poem, “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones.” Working within, across and beyond colonial lexicons, the installation reads philip’s poem through, and as, different audio-visual-textual moments of revolutionary intent, wherein black girlhood and black femininity are, a priori, re-coding the aesthetic promises of modernity.

Anchored to nourbeSe philip’s gorgeous poem, we each offered different interpretations and readings of this work, in essay form, in conversation, through archival work, bookmaking, across photographic and textual narratives, in sounds, circuits and shared stories. We are: nourbeSe philip, Katherine McKittrick, Nasrin Himada, Juliane Okot Bitek, Trish Salah, Cora Gilroy-Ware, Chloé Savoie-Bernard, Yaniya Lee, Sameen Mahboubi, Aaliyah Strachan, Muna Dahir, Cristian Ordóñez, Roya DelSol."

I’m also deeply grateful to the participants—Clara Lacasse, Meg Ross, Valérian Mazataud, and Grégoire Bellans—for their enthusiasm, trust, and the opportunity to engage with their incredible work. It was truly inspiring to learn from each of you, and this experience reinforced how much I enjoy the collaborative process.

The workshop was enriched by insightful artist talks from Birthe Piontek and Benjamin Freedman, along with group critiques by Ben and Lauren Wickware. A sincere thank you to all!

PAISAJE COMÚN (Common Landscape), Revista Letargo (Chile) — link here
“Paisaje común” y el detenerse como elemento fundamental para el mirar, texto escrito por Felipe Muñoz de la exhibición Paisaje Común en Galería Animal, Santiago de Chile.

“Ordoñez, con una investigación de carácter territorial direcciona la mirada hacia los valles de la región de Atacama, en Huasco. Desde ahí, se emerge el paisaje resultante de un territorio afectado por los cambios drásticos del clima y el propio actuar humano, fotografía que habla de la intervención directa e indirecta en el habitar del territorio, recordándonos su fragilidad y aridez." — extracto

"Ordoñez, with a territorial investigation, directs his gaze towards the valleys of the Atacama region, in Huasco. From there, the resulting landscape of a territory affected by drastic changes in the climate and human action itself emerges, a photograph that speaks of the direct and indirect intervention in the habitation of the territory, reminding us of its fragility and aridity." — extract

56 pages
30 photographs
7.25 x 8.75 inches
Swiss-bound hard cover
Edition of 100 copies
Edited by Jonas Feige, Alan Huck, and Cristian Ordóñez
Designed by Cristian Ordóñez
Published by Another Earth
© 2024

Pages: 72
Binding: Perfect
Paper: Mohawk Superfine, Via, and Keaycolour
Size: 9×12 inches
Edition: 100
Printing: Risograph (Black, Red, Purple, Yellow), Screenprint (cover)
Images & Text: Kate Schneider
Sequencing & Design: Cristian Ordóñez & Kate Schneider
Riso Printing: Kate Schneider
Cover Printing: Jo Yetter
Typeface: Domaine, Klim Type Foundr
Book documentation: Kevin Kunstadt
© 2023

Since 2016 OMNE has organized three editions of artist residencies hosting twenty-two authors and an articulated program of events. The results of the previous artist residencies have been published in the volumes OMNE/WORK 2016–2018 (LetteraVentidue, 2018), OMNE/ BEAUTY 2018–2021 (Skinnerboox, 2021), OMNE/NATURE 2021–2023 (is being published).

This year's edition of the OMNE/LAND artist residency took place in Castelfranco Veneto, Italy, between September 21 and 28. It was a great pleasure and an honor to be awarded and participate in this art residency program, which included a series of conferences with artists, urban planners and architects, various exhibitions, talks and all the photographic work that was created in the territory, work that it is currently being processed and edited in Canada. I also participated in the OMNEFEST program with an artist talk about my personal practice at Villa Parco Bolasco. Thanks to the commission: Guido Guidi, Gerry Johansson, Stefania Rössl, Massimo Sordi, Maura Gallina and the entire Osservatorio Mobile Nord Est team.

The artist residence is a biennale program (2023–2025), with artists Filippo Maria Barbero (IT), Michele Cera (IT), Camilla de Maffei (IT), Matteo de Mayda (IT), Giulia Iacolutti (IT), Ingar Krauss (GE), Cristian Ordóñez (CL+CA) and Aaron Schuman (US+UK). Plus invited photographers Olivo Barbieri (IT) and Francesco Raffaelli (IT). Each one of us will continue to work on this biennale program to produce a collective book and group exhibition towards 2025, the new edition of OMNEFEST in Italy.

Castelfranco Veneto, Treviso, Italy
Artist Residence September 21st – 28th, 2023
OMNE/LAND program biennale 2023 – 2025

"I wouldn’t necessarily have known it from looking at the photographs themselves: Ordóñez is an exquisite observer of place, but his interest in place is not a sociologist’s or even a geographer’s; seeing where you are, in this work, has little to do with knowing where you are..." — Barry Schwabsky

Photograph by Veronica Nicolardi.

EXHIBITION (CANADA), Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, Valle (solo show) — link here
The series Valle, from Huasco Valley, Atacama, is exhibited at Rencontres de la photographie en Gaspésie, 14th edition of the Festival, curated by Claude Goulet and installed at Matapedia Valley, Quebéc from July 15 to September 30, 2023.

REVIEW, Frequency 2023 — link here
Honoured to have Louis Perreault review Frequency for Ciel Variable Magazine. Thank you very much for your reading and interpretation of the work!

The wearing away of the built environment, the resilience of plants, and the faint, but inevitable, presence of time passing: Cristian Ordóñez invites us to look at the world both for what it might have once been and for what it will become. Here, Louis Perreault reviews the book Frequency.
—
L’usure du bâti, la résilience du végétal et la présence sourde, mais inévitable, du temps qui s’écoule : Cristian Ordóñez invite à regarder le monde à la fois pour ce qu’il a pu être dans le passé, mais aussi pour ce qu’il deviendra. Louis Perrault commente ici le livre Frequency.

COLLECTIONS, Frequency 2023 — link here
Very honoured the book Frequency has recently joined the following collections:

— National Gallery of Canada, Library & Archives Collection (Canada)
— Art Gallery of Ontario, Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives Collection (Canada)
— San Telmo Museum, Gabriela Cendoya Bergareche Collection (Spain).

BOOK, Frequency 2023 — link here
New book "Frequency" is out — 46 photographs, 72 pages, 8.75 x 10.5 in, Soft Cover, Smyth Sew, Swiss binding with exposed spine. Printed in Canada. Limited edition. This book was created with the support of the Edward Burtynsky Grant from the CONTACT Festival, awarded in 2021. Available soon, contact studio@cristianordonez.com

EXHIBITION (GERMANY), A Sense of Place (group show) — link here
Curated by Bénédicte Blondeau and Rüdiger Lange. The concept of "A Sense of Place" is the focus of the third collaboration between PEP - Photographic Exploration Project and B-Part Berlin Exhibition. Exhibition dates: April 1 - 29, 2023. Opening reception Friday, March 31st in Berlin.

Artists include: David Bruneel, Zoé Chauvet, Sara Cuce, Owen Davies, Jonathan De Maeyer, Luciana Demichelis, Juan Fabuel, Lindsay Godin, Jasper Goodall, Mohammad Rakibul Hasan, Jade Joannès, Alicja Khatchikian, Cassandra Klos, Su Kui, Santeri Kuisma, Céline Levain, Cristian Ordóñez, Xenia Petrovska, Jamie Reed, Christopher Rodriguez, Bartolomeo Rossi, Pascal Sgro, Marvin Systermans, Anya Tsaruk, Greta Valente, Ties van Brussel, Pauline Vanden Neste, Nick Verhaeghe, Yuxi Wang, Wang Chuen Wong, Kinga Wrona and Martha Wurmus.

PUBLICATION (CANADA), Trick Not Telos
Trick Not Telos by Katherine McKittrick was curated by Liz Ikiriko and Katherine McKittrick, design direction by Cristian Ordóñez. French translations are by Lyse Hébert. Print production by The Gas Company. Parts of this project were funded by the SSHRC Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University. 
8x10 (5 books + unbound booklet); 11x8.5x2.5 (Box); English and French. 100 copies.
ISBN 978-1-7782093-0-7 

An experiment in repetition and revision, Trick Not Telos takes words and ideas that have already been shared and refashions them outside their original context. The project understands written academic narratives as flexible and shifting yet tethered to a past formation or iteration; the project seeks to express how ideas on the page are simultaneously tactile, opaque, and precise and thus how the written word, and the academic argument, have the capacity to unravel while also maintaining historical traces. Trick Not Telos is, in part, working through and complementing Amiri Baraka’s “the changing same” by illuminating how creative unboundedness is harnessed to black energy, memory, and place.¹ As a method, the changing same is the engagement, sharing, reading and response to black ideas (songs, narratives, spirituals, tunes, words, lyrics, impulses, sounds) with a recognition of contested and broken and seamless creative genealogies. In this, black creative and intellectual works are comprised of entanglements of the things that never left us and ongoing effacement. Trick Not Telos sits with this creative uneasiness; it emerges from both trace and impossibility. The five essays shared here have been written and read and published before. They were given permission to repeat. They were re-read and reformatted and shared. They were translated toward French and re-imagined as French-English pairs. They were redesigned. They were recontextualized and remade as academic objects that perhaps desire, but may not fully realize, black aesthetic possibilities. Trick Not Telos is inspired by the work of Krista Franklin, Neta Bomani, Alec Soth, Roy DeCarava, Adrien Piper, among others. It is guided by the beautiful art book, the tactual photography book, the spines of novels, pages of verse and vellum and uncoated paper and the weaver’s knot and the vinyl box set.  Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s reading of “Plantation Futures” inspired the title, Trick Not Telos. 

PUBLICATION (Chile/Canada), Multinacionales y Comunidades
Part of the photographic work "Valle", created as part of a research project in collaboration with Associate Professor, Eduardo Ordonez-Ponce. This publication is created in response to ongoing research that began in early 2022, including a visit to the Huasco Valley in Atacama, Chile in October of the same year. Specially produced in a limited edition to deliver the preliminary quantitative results to the community of Huasco, namely actors from the civil society, the public sector, indigenous peoples, business people and ordinary citizens who participated in this process.

Funded by Athabasca University and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development of the Government of Canada, in collaboration with the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Santiago de Chile. Created and edited by Eduardo Ordonez-Ponce, PhD, Athabasca University and Photographer, Cristian Ordóñez.

EXHIBITION (CANADA), Galery 44 (group show) — link here
My books "Displace" published by Another Earth and "On Trial" published by acb-press will be available at Salon 44, Gallery 44's annual fundraising exhibition in support of exhibition and education programs, bringing together a collection of over 60 established and emerging artists with valued works for both new and seasoned collectors. Salon 44 is co-chaired by Emilie Croning and Maegan Broadhurst. Opening this Thursday 2 in Toronto from 7-10pm.

EXHIBITION (MEXICO), Espacio Migrante (group show) — link here
Collective installation curated by Anamaria Briede and Catalina De la Cruz at Museo de la Ciudad, Santiago de Querétaro, México, as part of Encuentro de Fotografía de Querétano 2023, with a selection of photographs from Frequency.

The project takes as a reference the American territory, specifically South America and from there it seeks to re-articulate, re-draw and above all re-connect the borders from the photographic practice.

The work is based on the possibility of creating a dialectic that distorts the notions of territory, identity and geography from the South American perspective that unites us, to inhabit and materialize the poetic illusion of a new imaginary, as a cartography of individual experiences, historical, social, political and emotional contexts. A collaborative visual writing as a repository of mental, intimate, public, emotional images as a glossary of territorial geolocations that indicate the cultural plurality of America.

Collaborative project that brings together photographic, audio and music works by Latin American artists looking at the territory: Aníbal Mangoni (Argentina), Guadalupe Arriegue (Argentina), Federico Estol (Uruguay), Claudio Bertoni (Chile), Guillermo Daghero (Chile-Argentina), Cecilia Cordi (Argentina), Pilar Pedraza (Perú), Juan Carlos Rodríguez (México), Jhonny Chávez (Perú), Margara De Haene (México), Esmelyn Miranda (Venezuela), Andrés Muñoz (Chile), Nia Diedla (Chile-Francia), Martín Gubbins (Chile), Gregorio Fontén (Chile), Romina Resuche (Argentina), Santiago Jara (Chile), and Cristián Ordóñez (Canada – Chile). 

PRESS (US), New York Review of Architecture — link here
Article published today “Is Toronto burning?”, by Sebastián López Cardozo focusing on Toronto’s social and economic crisis. The article highlights my recent show Displace at Project 107 Gallery, as a memoir of a modernist building slated for demolition in the Regent Park neighbourhood. Article by Uruguayan architectural designer, editor, and writer, Sebastián López Cardozo.

Extract: The same building is the setting for, and the object of CRISTIAN ORDÓÑEZ’s new large-format photography exhibition, Displace, which opened on January 5. The exhibition marks the culmination of a year-long collaboration between Ordóñez and the gallery. “Nicole and [co-owner] Justin [Pape] found this space,” Ordóñez told me, “and I started visiting them and working with them on projects.” On his frequent visits to the building, he began noticing certain quirks—an aborted renovation project, a stained carpet, a desiccated plant left behind in an empty office—that he eventually thought to record.

The photographs are mounted on thin wooden structures. Anchored to the wall and to the ground, the displays venture into the space of the gallery itself. “There are corners, areas where you have to go in and discover new images; it recreates the way that I discovered spaces while moving through the building,” said Ordóñez. Speaking of his decision to print the photographs in newsprint paper, Ordóñez said that he wanted to evoke the fragility and impermanence of the space: “Unlike what you might expect from fine art prints, newsprint will disappear over time. It’s a metaphor, in a way, about how this place is also going to disappear.”

EXHIBITION (CANADA), Displace (solo show) — link here
Solo show at Project 107 Gallery in Toronto, ON Canada. Opening on Thursday, January 5, until Sunday, January 8.

PROCESS (CHILE), Valle
Currently working on a research project focusing on the communities and their territories of the Huasco Valley, located in the southern Atacama Desert, Chile.

PRESS (LATIN AMERICA), Frecuencia — link here
Article written by Alejandra Villasmil by contemporary art magazine Artishock about my exhibition Frequency at Galería Animal.

Extract (Spanish): "En Frecuencia no estamos ante imágenes de una clasificación fácil. Aunque su opacidad es precisamente su gran virtud, es en la vivencia autoral de lo glocal desde donde se puede entender el impulso de estas cuidadas composiciones. Muchas de ellas abrazan la noción espacio-tiempo a través de la “ausencia de nuestra presencia” en el paisaje urbano, o las marcas y cicatrices del concreto yuxtapuestas a una naturaleza herida que lucha por defender el lugar sagrado que le corresponde."

EXHIBITION (DENMARK), The Artist as Author: Recent Canadian Photobooks (group show) — link here
My four books On Trial and Notes 1, 2 and 3 are part of the group exhibition The Artist as Author: Recent Canadian Photobooks, curated by Louis Perreault, at Photobook Week Aarhus in the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark. Available between October 27 - 30. Supported by The Canadian Art Council, Galleri Image and the Aarhus School of Architecture.

ARTIST TALK (ONLINE), The People United
Online Artist talk on October 13 at 7PM EST together with artist Syrup Marcus Ware, for Sur Gallery.

EXHIBITION (CHILE), Frecuencia (solo show)
Thursday 6 de Octubre de 19:00-21:00 hrs. Galería Animal. Av. Nueva Costanera 3731, Vitacura, Santiago. Curated by Maria Jose Sagredo. Supported by Ontario Art Council and Canada Council for the Arts.

EXHIBITION (CANADA), The People United (group show)
Sur Gallery, Toronto ON Canada. Curated by Tamara Toledo. Artists: Beehive Collective, Carlos Colín, Cristian Ordóñez, Syrus Marcus Ware and Colectivo LASTESIS. September 22 - November 26, 2022

BOOK (US/CANADA), Signals — link here
Photo Edit and Design of Signals by Another Earth. Edition in conjunction with Abbey Meaker. Signals presents the works and words of 30 artists and writers as messages received from a beautiful and strained planet.

Presents the images and words of 30 artists and writers as messages received from a beautiful and strained planet. Organized into elemental chapters – earth, fire, water, wind – the works coalesce around weather events from the devastating to the mundane, offering a collective portrait of reciprocity and communication between self, earth, and environment.

Artists: Dylan Haustor, Daniel Fleitas, Camila Valdés, Vojtech Veskrna, Gaspar Abrilot, Henry Tyson, Susan Clarahan, Chelsea Call, Ben Currotto, Tommy Nease, Rodolfo Muñoz, Parker Stewart, Tyler Muzzin, Tal Ben Avi, Ali Beşikçi, Catlin Johnson, Sebastien Arrighi, Sharon Castellanos, Paloma Palomino, Sean Peeters, Keith Gray, Max LaBelle, Leah Beeferman, John Watts, Helen Kohnke, Andy Becker, Adam Ianniello, Elijah Barrett, Lindsay Godin, DJ Hellerman

72 pages colour
6 x 7.85 inches
Thread Sewn Paperback
Card stock Slipcase
Edition of 100 copies
English
Printed by The Gas Company, Inc.
Book designed by Cristian Ordóñez.
Edited by Abbey Meaker and Cristian Ordóñez.
Curated by Abbey Meaker, Cristian Ordóñez, and Estefania Puerta.
©2022

BOOK FAIR (AUSTRALIA), On Trial — link here
On Trial, published by acb press was recently launched at Photo 2022, Photobook Weekend in Melbourne, Australia and Permanent Art Book Fair in Sydney, Australia with acb press and Rohan Hutchinson — Order here

PUBLICATION (ITALY), Urbanautica Insitute Awards 2020 — link here
Recently released, the new publication by Urbanautica Institute, with all the winners of their awards from 2020. Under the category "Architecture, Space, Conflicts", the project Frequency is featured with photographs and text.

Photographers and visual artists featured: Richard Chivers, Cristian Ordóñez, Andreas Tschersich, Fyodor Konukhov, Filippo Bardazzi, Pierre Folk, Rosie Barnes, Dawn Roe, Bruno Silva, Tommaso Rada, Ralph Steinegger, Benina Hu, Paweł Starzec, Sara Palmieri, Daniele Molajoli, Jaime Permuth, Michelle Piergoelam, Michaela Nagyidaiová, Anne Immelé, Ivan Petrović, Camillo Pasquarelli, Marc Ohrem-Leclef, Matteo Spertini, Breno Rotatori, Kosmas Pavlidis, Thomas Gauthier, Jenia Fridlyand, Max Arens, Antone Dolezal & Lara Shipley, Davide Degano.

COLLECTION (SPAIN), San Telmo Museum — link here
Honoured to have my publications Notes 1, Notes 2, Notes 3 and Other Voices being part of the Gabriela Cendoya Bergareche Collection at San Telmo Museum, Spain.

PRESS (UK), C4 Journal — link here
Notes included in the article "Zines that made us think in 2021".

Extract, text by Callum Beaney: Without commitment to a fully-fledged narrative, Ordóñez’s images, in their spotty, charcoal blacks, keep true to their quality as observations, curiosities held by the photographer. Notes 3 exclusively observes the shape & structure of the landscapes, presenting in logical progress the desert’s cascading, granular textures of foliage and rocks, moving later to the divide between land and sky. Though a logical progression, it is one both intuitive and visually gorgeous." 

PRESS (SPAIN), Fotonostrum — link here
Interviewed and featured at Fotonostrum Magazine issue 22. FotoNostrum Magazine is a spinoff of FotoNostrum Gallery, Mediterranean House of Photography, a parent company of WonderPick (UK) and The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards. It is released monthly, available on print and online. FotoNostrum, Barcelona, Spain.

HONOURS (CANADA), Burtynsky Grant Winner, 2021 — link here
Ongoing body of work "Frequency" has won the 2021 Burtynsky Grant. Jury by Edward Burtynsky, Romke Hoogwaerts, Michele Pearson Clarke, and Zun Lee. CONTACT Photography Festival.

Extract (CONTACT Photography Festival): “Produced while on daily walks throughout Toronto in 2020 and 2021, Cristian Ordóñez’s project 'Frequency' is a timely meditation on the tension between humans, nature, and the urban landscape. Ordóñez’s large- and medium-format photographs are masterfully composed, presenting uncanny vestiges of both natural and built environments in a wide tonal range of black and white. The energy, thoughtfulness, and the pacing of this body of work resonates with the pace of what life has been like in recent years. Ordóñez has been quietly and consistently creating self-published book projects for many years, and the jury is excited that this grant will assist him in the opportunity to work with a publisher."

EXHIBITION (UK), Read the Room (group show)
Publications Notes 01, 02 + 03 part of group show Read the Room. A celebration of self-published and independently published works and the artists who make them. Serchia Gallery in Bristol.  October 22-24, 2021.

VIDEO (CANADA), Nothing Special
Video concept and directed by Cristian Ordóñez. Audio composed by Justin Pape. Final video with voice over by Matt Schichter. Collaboration with Biography. 

BOOK (CANADA), Nothing Special
36 Photographs by Cristian Ordóñez. Book Edited and Designed by Marlo Onilla. 51.5 x 33.5 x 70 cms (Box). 48.5 x 33 x 30 cms (Book). 108 pages. Book contained in handmade box (Gauze, Paint, Sand, Epoxy and Laser Cut). Cover photograph protected with resin. Brass engraved and polished tube with pencil inside. Limited edition. Collaboration with Biography. 

FAIR (ONLINE), Artsy, with Galería Animal — link here
Part of the first edition of Latin American Galleries Now by Artsy, bringing together the gallery associations of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico all in one place. Joining this initiative thanks to Galería Animal, together with artists Bruno Giliberto, Patricia Claro and Hernán Gana. Thanks to curator María Jose Sagredo. Latin American Galleries Now. July 19 - August 9, 2021.

PRESS (ITALY) Other Voices — link here
Thanks for the words to Greta and the Pellicola Magazine.

Extract: Landscapes as works of our mind. Cristian Ordóñez explores the border between reality and memory and the recurring connections that establish when these two dimensions interact with one another. Emotions, connections, sensory perceptions shape what we experience creating a symbolic reality, unidentifiable and in between moments in which the unknown and the familiar become inseparable. This boundary between what is far and what is recognizable is what makes way for unclear associations, as we were floating into existence directed by our past, like a “narrative dream”. Works from publication "Other Voices", 2019.

HONOURS (ITALY), Urbanautica Institute — link here
Ongoing project "Frequency" has been awarded the Urbanautica Institute Annual Awards 2020, in the category Representations of Space, Architecture, and Conflicts. The project is accompanied by a text by the sociologist Mónica Salinero Rates. The project will be published later this year in a publication by the institute. Urbanautica Institute works on photography, visual anthropology and cultural landscapes.